Friendship One
'' |image= |series= |production=40840-267 |producer(s)= |story= |script=Michael Taylor and Bryan Fuller |director=Mike Vejar |imdbref=tt0708900 |guests=Josh Clark as Lt. Joe Carey, Ken Land as Verin, John Prosky as Otrin, Bari Hochwald as Brin, Peter Dennis as Admiral Hendricks, Ashley Edner as Yun, David Ghilardi as Alien Lieutenant, Heather Langone as Brin's Relative, John Rosenfeld as Technician #1 and Wendy Speake as Technician #2 |previous_production=Q2 |next_production=Author, Author |episode=VGR S07E21 |airdate=25 April 2001 |previous_release=Author, Author |next_release=Natural Law |story_date(s)=54775.4 (2378) |previous_story=Author, Author |next_story=Natural Law }} Summary Enabled by its newfound method of regular communications with Starfleet in the Alpha Quadrant, U.S.S. Voyager is assigned its first official mission in the Delta Quadrant, to locate the space probe, Friendship 1, launched some centuries earlier, which Starfleet believes would be near Voyager's current position. The probe had technologically advanced (for its time) items including antimatter reactors and communication devices, in hopes to contact other species for peaceful communications. Using historical data and their own updated star charts, Voyager tracks the probe to a planet that is suffering from nuclear winter. An away team takes the Delta Flyer to the surface to retrieve the probe. They find pieces of the probe, but before investigating further, Paris, Neelix, and Lt. Carey are kidnapped by humanoid beings. Chakotay and Kim return to the Flyer where they are again attacked. They manage to stun the humanoid, but the shuttle is then attacked by anti-matter weapons. Chakotay orders the Flyer to return to Voyager as they cannot survive the barrage, with plans to return for the other three. Back on the ship, the Doctor treats the humanoid to consciousness. He states he is Otrin, one of the survivors of the population, and reports that when Friendship 1 landed on the planet, some of the population used the knowledge improperly, with the current nuclear winter caused by a failure in an anti-matter containment grid. Otrin warns that the three missing crewmembers are likely being held by Verin, leader of a group of survivors that have come to despise humans believing humans created the dilemma on the planet and that Voyager is now here to conquer them. Seven of Nine offers the idea of using her nanoprobes to both cure the radiation poisoning that the population is suffering from, and to restore the atmosphere and end the nuclear winter. She tests her theory on Otrin, proving the idea viable. Captain Janeway makes contact with Verin to negotiate. Verin demands that Voyager help to transfer the remaining population to a safe planet, a process that will take at least three years. Janeway believes this impractical, and instead offers to provide food and medicine for release of one of the hostages. Verin agrees, allowing Carey to be beamed back to the ship, but just as the transporter beam starts, Verin kills Carey. Janeway is shocked and relents to Verin's evacuation plan when he threatens to kill another hostage. Otrin realizes they may need someone besides Verin to speak for his people, and works with the Voyager crew to develop a plan. They successfully use the Doctor to disguise himself as one of Verin's people, allowing them to infiltrate their base, render the other captors unconscious, and free Paris and Neelix. Otrin takes over leadership from Verin, explaining Voyager's plan to restore their planet's environment. With the Voyager crew returned and on Otrin's signal, they launch photon torpedoes that will explode in the atmosphere with the nanoprobes, which will start a chain reaction to restore the planet. The chain reaction causes a great deal of seismic activity, frightening Verin into a panic and causing him to try to initiate the planetary defense systems to destroy Voyager. Otrin and his people stop him in time. After the quakes have subsided, Otrin and his people look outside onto a beautiful sunny day, the signs of nuclear winter eradicated. Errors and Explanations Nit Central # LUIGI NOVI on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 1:05 pm: They showed a clip of this episode when Jeri Ryan guested on "The Rosie O'Donnell" show. During the clip, the Doctor and Seven decide to use Seven's nanoprobes to help treat the alien on the biobed suffering from radiation damage. The alien says, "Nanoprobes?", and Seven explains that they are "microscopic machines" in her bloodstream that maintain her cybernetic implants. If the term "nanoprobes," is accurate, then they're "nanoscopic," not "microscopic." The prefix "micro" refers to something that is one millionth (millionth of a meter, millionth of a gram, etc.) in size. "Nano" means one BILLIONTH. Josh G. on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 3:01 pm: Luigi, you're misinterpreting the usage of "microscopic." It simply means "on a tiny scale," as opposed to "macroscopic" - on a large or normal scale. If Seven was describing the specific size of the nanoprobes, she would have used actual units of measurement, not an indicator of relative size like "microscopic." TomM on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 4:04 pm: You are both focusing on the prefix and ignoring the whole word. "Microscopic" means small enough to require a microscope. Still Josh is right in that in this case "micro-" simply means small, as opposed to "macro-" which means large, rather than the more formal metric value. # Rene on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 7:56 pm: When that leader apologizes to Carry, it was pretty obvious what he was about to do. So why didn't he make any attempt to take cover, or why didn't Paris or Neelix figure it out. Maybe they took him at his word! # 2067, huh? Considering it's only a few years after the third world war, would Earth really be able to send that Friendship One probe? Steve Oostrom on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 9:36 pm: Personally, I find it unlikely that humans could build a probe like Friendship One just four years after Cochrane's first flight. On the other hand, the probe did bear a certain resemblance to the Phoenix. I also find it hard to believe that humans had the ability to remain in communications with that probe as far as it went. After all, in the original series episode The Cage and others, the implication was that faster-than-light communications were not possible until about the time of that episode. If the probe was transmitting electromagnetically, then they would have lost contact as soon as it was a couple of hundred light years from Earth. I think they should've bumped up the launch date a couple of decades and then referred to it as one of those galaxy-mapping probes (I believe DS9's pilot mentioned such a probe). They could have added the "friendship aspects" to it, just like we attach plaques and things to probes launched now which will leave the solar system. Spockania on Tuesday, April 24, 2001 - 1:36 pm: I haven't seen the episode yet but... is it possible the Vulcans helped Earth with the probe? Josh G. on Tuesday, April 24, 2001 - 2:42 pm: That's certainly possible; it would have been a good explanation too, but the creators evidently thought that it wasn't relevant. # Corey Hines on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 8:00 pm: If the probe was launched just after Cochrane's first warp flight, why would it have the Starfleet chevron on it. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 2:42 am: Is it possible that that was the symbol chosen by whatever group sent the probe, and that when Starfleet was formed a century later, they chose to adopt that symbol as their own in honor of that early pre-Starfleet group? KAM on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 3:42 am:''The chevron didn't become The Starfleet Symbol until the Star Trek Movies. During the original series it was simply the symbol for the Enterprise. ''Seniram 10:48, August 19, 2018 (UTC) Actually, Star Trek Enterprise shows the chevron to be a Starfleet wide symbol – the use of individual symbols for each ship could have been a short lived experiment during the events of The Original Series. dkehler on Sunday, April 29, 2001 - 11:50 am: According to the (admittedly non canon) book "Federation", the chevron symbol was invented by Zephram Cochrane as a graphic depiction of the energy required to travel at light speed (infinite) versus the energy required to travel at warp speed. So the probe could easily have displayed it. # Chris Booton (Cbooton) on Monday, April 23, 2001 - 8:06 pm: How could the federation be tracking friendship one until it crashed? I thought their sensors didnt extend that far? Or at least if it was sending signals they would take years to get to them. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 2:42 am: They didn't. All Janeway said in Act 1 was that they tracked it until 130 years prior to the episode, which means they tracked it for 180 years. That doesn't mean it crashed 180 years after its launch, only that it moved too far away to maintain contact. It probably took far longer for FO to reach the alien planet. # Chief Sharky on Tuesday, April 24, 2001 - 12:10 am: Why did they have to kill Joe Carey off, like he was just some security guard in classic trek? His character deserved better. Carey has built up a loyal fan following over the years, and I'm sure they will be very angry about this. Also why was no attempt made to revive him? In Mortal Coil they were able to bring Neelix back after he been dead for hours, with help from Seven and her nanobots! So why wasn't something similar tried with Carey, he had only been dead for a couple of minutes!? Was he not worth the effort? NarkS on Saturday, April 28, 2001 - 8:50 pm: Not to repeat what has already been said, but the Doc can't fix what was for all intents and purposes a gunshot wound to the chest? It's not like the guy had time to die. He was beamed directly to sickbay. It was 5 seconds ago, 3 of which were in suspended animation during transport. Jwb52z on Sunday, April 29, 2001 - 12:10 pm: The weapon that the man used to shoot Joe Carey was an ANTIMATTER WEAPON. That in conjunction with the nuclear radiation is what probably did it. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, April 29, 2001 - 12:50 pm: No, it wasn't. The missles in the silos were antimatter weapons. There was no dialogue or other evidence that the hand-held weapons were as well. If it were antimatter, it would've taken out the entire cave, not just put a wound in Joe's upper left pectoral. Besides, even if it were antimatter, so what? The bottom line is, there was only a small wound, and no vital organs were hit (as I said, the wound was on his upper left pec), Doc should've been able to save.Seniram 10:48, August 19, 2018 (UTC) The interaction between the weapon beam and the molecular structure of his body during transport probably resulted in too much cellular damage. # LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 1:58 am: In Act 3, Doc says Otrim’s tissues are saturated with antimatter radiation. Wouldn’t he have exploded the instant any antimatter particles came into cotact with him? The Doc is referring to radiation from antimatter. # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 2:12 am: Apparently Chakotay didn't give Paris & Neelix his little speech from Emanations about the taking of souvenirs. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 2:50 am: They weren't exploring an alien burial ground in this episode, Keith. They were retrieving an artifact from their own culture. What does one have to do with the other? # Brian Lombard on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 5:20 am: The aliens spend the majority of the episode doubting Starfleet's intentions, believing that the probe was sent as a prelude to conquest. Dudes, the name of the probe was FRIENDSHIP. We know you're $tupid, but are you illiterate as well? Richie Vest on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 7:37 am: Brian they were aliens how do you know they could read english? S. Donaldson on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 8:10 am: If I recall correctly one of the items the probe contained was a translation matrix. Brian Lombard on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 9:19 am: And even if they couldn't read it, I think the message the probe relayed stated the probe's name. They certainly knew it came from a planet called Earth. Stands to reason that they would have known the name of the probe.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 12:20 pm: Brian, from the point of view of the aliens, the name of the probe is irrelevant. Remember, conquerors often make contact with cultures under the guise of peace. Kira made this point regarding the Cardassians coming to Bajor sixty years prior to Emissary, as did the Sky Spirit alien to Chakotay toward the end of Tattoo. It's like saying, well I didn't know that guy would shoot me because the gun he had was called a Magnum "Pacifist." TomM on Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 12:45 pm: Even if they did understand the name Friendship One, the leader's view of the Federation's intentions would lead him to expect them to name the probe something like that, as deliberate mis-direction. From his POV, the purpose was to encourage them to use technology they were not ready for. Category:Episodes Category:Voyager